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August 2009

31 August 2009

The national healthcare debate will again kick into high gear as Congress reconvenes in a week or so. Both sides have been accusing each other of lying about what Obamacare will entail. The Left’s argument is the standard ‘that is a lie/misrepresentation/myth’, and then they leave it there as if denials and counter-charges in and of themselves complete the argument. By necessity, the Right has taken its argument to higher ground, and refutes the promises of socialized medicine with reason and hard facts, which, if false, should give the Left devastating openings to win the debate. Since this has not occurred, one must conclude that the only ammunition left to the Left is liberal application of speed and fog to get Obamacare passed before more people begin to smell a rat.

As an example of this, please consider ‘Sorting Fact From Fiction on Health Care’ in the 31aug09 WSJ by Drs Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, practicing physicians who are also on the Harvard Medical School faculty. Their piece addresses some of the egregious claims of Obamacare. One of them is the oft-repeated but never expanded myth that the US’s 37th place in the WHO rankings results from some undebatable clinical numbers. Not so, it is actually a number that comes from a formula containing a lot of subjective non-medical factors. As the authors go on to explain –

30 August 2009

Historians take years to dissect and reassemble the achievements of most American presidents into a legacy that will characterize and summarize their years in office. President Obama appears to be simplifying that task. Former CIA field operative and highly decorated national security official Herbert Meyer starts ‘What the President's Attack on the CIA Really Means’ in the 26aug09 American Thinker with -

There is now just one group of people exempt from President Obama's worldwide ban on torture: the men and women of the CIA.

By authorizing Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether a full criminal investigation of CIA employees and contractors is warranted for the manner in which they interrogated captured terrorists, the President has thrown his power and support behind those far-left ideologues -- in Congress and elsewhere -- who believe that the CIA is a bigger threat to our country than al Qaeda.

I know the men and women of the CIA -- I had the honor of working with them during the Reagan Administration -- and they would rather have their fingernails pulled out with pliers or have holes drilled into their knees (neither of which they did to captured terrorists, as the Justice Department's hot-shot investigators will learn) than be thought of as anything other than honorable patriots doing their best, under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to protect our country from its enemies. It will be excruciating for them to face their colleagues each morning under the strain of looming criminal prosecutions that will destroy their careers and deplete their meager savings accounts -- and, even worse, to come home to their families each evening with the stench of President Obama's contempt for their honor in the air.

28 August 2009

Today the much ballyhooed cross-country Tea Party Express started off on the west steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento. Jo Ann and I were up early to get our puppy settled for the day, pick up our neighbor, and drive down to Bethel Church where three busses were lined up and waiting to take the Nevada County contingent of the Tea Party Patriots to join the doings in Sacramento.

Our first hint that this was not a well-oiled operation came when our ‘bus captain’ finished his rousing remarks about how important the Tea Parties were as we barreled down Hwy 49. Then people started asking the normal questions about the event and the transportation logistics, to which his uniform reply was ‘I don’t know, they didn’t tell me.’ OK, we’re all grown up and we’ll wing it.

The bus got off the I-5 freeway and soon we were winding our way through Sacramento’s streets, some of these were already blocked off which forced to go around the barn a couple of times before winding up conveniently in front of the Capitol’s west end. At 1030 lots of people were already there, and lively music was playing even though the program was not to start until noon.

In the days leading up to this event we were told that the participants would number in the thirty to fifty thousand range, and include people arriving to protest the government imposed drought in the Central Valley that has cost over 40,000 jobs to date, and even more to protest the AB32 legislation that is giving the California Air Resources Board (CARB) the power to economically devastate an already devastated state. All right! Bring them on, lots of issues for everyone to hoot and holler about.

26 August 2009

[This piece is a continuation of a series that explores the large currents shaking our country and the world. Here we look at the labor shock from which America today has no plan to recover. No one wants to talk about it.]

Let’s start by recalling the fate of John Henry, America’s legendary ‘steel drivin’ man’ when he attempted to save his job by competing with the new steam-driven steel driver.

Before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the American worker was competing against about 1,500,000,000 workers in the world economy. The other 1,500,000,000 workers of the world were locked behind heavy gates in the socialist/communist workers’ paradises. Their efforts and output didn’t compete with the workers of America and the free world. Then the wall came down, and over the next three to five years there were ‘suddenly’ three billion workers across the world, all making things and providing services that could be sold across national boundaries.

The economists and sociologists called this The Great Doubling (and here), and it has poured into labor markets hundreds of millions of workers who discovered that they too can find their place in the sun along with the rest of us in the west. Foreign governments immediately saw how they could compete. Just start making things that the comfortable, under-educated, and highly paid western workers made, but make them cheaper and with higher quality. They all learned to skip the learning curve of the post-war Japanese. Every worker in the third world who went from field to factory was a hero to their own family and village. And these eager people went through cutthroat competition to get and keep those jobs while our workers were grousing about not enough benefits and pay for the same output.

We’ve all heard this story, but perhaps, keeping the Great Doubling in mind will give us someplace to hang our hat and reflect as we send our kids off to school to learn skills that are valued primarily in the public sector. Millions from the other billion and a half are spending more time studying math or science books, and then working their tails off to get into the local technical college. In those far off lands all it takes is brains, and a clear recollection that you’ll spend your life staring at the ass-end of a water buffalo in a rice paddy if you ever decide that you ‘don’t do numbers’. All the while the American youngster was taught that s/he had rights – the first of which was to cultivate a totally worthless sense of self-esteem (see update below) – and that the gummint would always come to the rescue.

But the Great Doubling is just one jaw of the pincer that’s putting the squeeze on the 140 million American workers. The other side is made up of accelerating technology in its myriad of forms. Smarter and smarter computers are teeming with nano-technology and genomics to continually stretch the income inequality gap between those who can and will, and those who can’t or won’t. The latter quickly see that their future lies in backing governments that will use the force of arms to provide them with what is not theirs.

25 August 2009

Fouad Ajami is an American academic of Lebanese descent who writes regularly about our body politic. In today’s WSJ Ajami offers us a reasoned and penetrating analysis of the first six months of Obama’s presidency that contains one of the clearest assessments of how we got to where we are, and where Obama wants to take us from here. In ‘Obama’s Summer of Discontent’ he states

…It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These “townhallers” who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled “evil-mongers” (Harry Reid), “un-American” (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.

A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-confidence. Historically, this republic, unlike the Old World and the command economies of the Third World, had trusted the society rather than the state. In a perilous moment, that balance had shifted, and Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of that shift.

In his review of Obama’s campaign and subsequent rush to alter America, Ajami points out that such attempts to play ‘the man on a white horse’ run into a fundamental problem on our shores -

American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.

These are thoughts to ponder as we contemplate the coming political season when the Democrats will attempt to re-ignite their legislative bum’s rush to turn the country into a socialist mess before anyone knows what’s going on. Perhaps they should reflect on Ajami’s words else they inadvertently abbreviate their moment in the sun.

22 August 2009

Ruminations readers are aware that inflation is a tax on all of our dollar-denominated assets (here). Now that we are staring a Weimar-like inflation in the face with all the dollars that the Fed generates out of thin air, our government is beginning to worry that too many people will catch on in time to get out of dollar denominated assets.

The latest evidence of this is the expansion of Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s powers (22aug09 WSJ). They now tell us that for our (the small investor’s) own good, they will start restricting our ability to easily trade in commodities like wheat, copper, pigs, and gold. People have fled the dollar in the hundreds of billions of dollars by buying new commodity ETFs (electronically traded funds). These ETFs closely track the world prices of the commodities that, of course, rise in the face of truck loads of newly printed dollars flooding the world. The government doesn’t want us to have such an easy escape from the dollar.

These ETFs work as open ended funds by buying more of their underlying commodity (and their futures), and issuing new shares whenever you buy another share of the ETF. All shares are backed by financial instruments that command the ownership of the underlier – pretty straight stuff. But our government says that such purchases by the retail investor is speculation, and artificially drives up the price of the underlying commodity for those who actually use the stuff to make things we buy.

Well yes, it does. But it does that because we’re all bailing out of our dollars, and that’s because there are too many depreciating dollars floating around out there (and many more on the way).

The CFTC will seek to make such ETFs into closed-ended funds that fix the number of shares that can be issued. Then as more people buy the ETF’s limited shares, their price will become a premium above the commodity price, thereby making them less attractive to the retail investor. At least that’s how the feds want to limit how we can get out of dollars that they intend to tax through inflation.

We note again that the government will not restrict the big guys like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley from buying commodities for their own portfolios and their big accounts. Just the little guys will be impacted ‘for their own good’.

In 1933 FDR made the private ownership of gold bullion, coins, and certificates illegal in his futile attempts to control the economy and end the Great Depression. For autocrats to control a population, they must first take away the people’s guns and gold, and force them to use a manipulable fiat currency for their medium of exchange. Forget about using that fiat currency as a store of value when a country’s debt and unfunded liabilities are already beyond repayment, and are now approaching levels where it can no longer make interest-only payments on the monies owed.

[23aug09 update] Perhaps readers new to RR may take my words as hyperbole or exaggeration. I try my best not to indulge myself in that manner. Here is an example of the utter sleaze that leftwingers in Congress are attempting with 'under the radar' legislation that will criminalize the legal ownership of guns. HR 45 cannot stand the light of day, so it is being ushered through the stinking, dimly lit back alleys of Congressional law making. The Big Brother brigades in that corrupt body want only criminals and the state to have guns so that the overwhelming number of law abiding citizens become like the post-Bolshevik Russians or the Germans after Hitler took the reins - forcibly compliant.

21 August 2009

Two or so weeks ago we got our new puppy as we arrived home from our granddaughter’s wedding in Denver. We are dog people and we have been without a puppy since our noble Neiu went to her reward over two years ago. It was an ordeal getting this mutt since we don’t fit the usual mold of sensitive and compassionate dog owners that many breeders today require. The search began early this year and ranged from the bay area to Oregon. We were looking for our third Dobie, a red female having smaller than larger chassis that is just right for travel.

Finally Jo Ann found a breeder in Sacramento, well connected and with all right qualifications, and available litters for the summer. She started the phone interview hoping to end with a visit date. It quickly turned out we were the interviewees. His first question was ‘where will the dog sleep?’ Jo Ann said that it would sleep where all of our other dogs since the 1960s have slept, in its own fine, cozy doghouse outside. That ripped it, we didn’t even get to first base. The breeder said that not only would he absolutely not sell us any of his puppies, but since we had given him our name, he would tell all the other central California Dobie breeders that there was a relative of Cruella de Vil out there looking to put an innocent puppy through a miserable life of unspeakable hardship and torture.

The Libyan welcome of the Lockerbie mass murderer released on “humanitarian grounds” should again educate the soft-headed among us who believe that Islamo-fascists are a small minority of the overseas Arab Muslim populations. That they hate the west and dream of the global caliphate should not surprise any student of history and current events. However, what we in America should note is the silence of the Islamic communities already ensconced on our shores. As Americans, where is their outrage? These are the ONLY occasions during which they can reliably demonstrate where their heads and hearts are sheltered. With their silence they have again made it clear that, as in Europe so also in our land, they are here as settlers.

19 August 2009

Toyota wants to shut down their bay area assembly plant employing 4,600 for all the obvious (to non-socialists) reasons. The state of California is trying to stop them by threatening to charge Toyota hundreds of millions of dollars for ‘clean up’ fees before they can move to a more business friendly climate. And the California legislature continues dominated by politicians who believe that prosperity is just one or two tax hikes away. (WSJ)

BTW, did you notice, in the comment thread of my column in the 15aug09 Union, the number of Nevada County residents who also firmly believe that higher taxes do the most to increase GDP and the general public welfare. Just in case anyone wonders how those tax-and-redistribute politicians get elected.

The Sacramento tea party on 28 August will involve many more folks than just people like Jo Ann and me. It seems that Tea Party Patriots are becoming a national focus for protesting all kinds of government interventions and obstructions of personal freedoms and productive activities. Tea Party Patriots co-ordinator Mark Meckler reports that

On August 28, groups who have never come together before, farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers, trucking companies, cement makers, builders...productive, hard working people from all political parties, social affiliations and industries will descend on the state capitol in Sacramento.

18 August 2009

The newspaper’s headline blares that ‘The Yuba Fire 30% Contained’, you nod your head thinking that it is good news since yesterday the fire was reported to be only 5% contained. But then you take a look at the published burn area maps for the last two days and see that today’s fire area is significantly larger. And then you realize that you still have no idea what it means when someone tells you that a wildfire is X% contained.

Jo Ann and I have lived in wildfire zones almost all of our lives, and have experienced the range of emotions as wildfires raged near our homes in Simi Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains. One of them (1993 Malibu fire) actually swept over our property and burned our house after having incinerated our four nearest neighbors down to the foundation bolts. A fire crew from Placerville put out the fire and saved our house that was pretty much trashed with a 12 foot hole in the living room ceiling. But it was a lot better than being greeted by just foundation bolts.

During all those years we kept hearing the various ‘percent containment’ reports. Being a techie, early on I asked both fire fighters and on site journalists what such reports meant. No one could give me an answer. The fire fighters kept asking each other and their local team leaders, and always concluded that it was some kind of number that was generated in some mysterious fire fighting control headquarters in the sky. None of journalists were interested in the question and begged off, saying they just reported what they were told by fire fighting public relations wonk.

17 August 2009

I would like to offer a few observations on some comments that responded to my column ‘Public Pensions – a breakdown’ in the 15aug09 Union. For openers, I don’t know any of the commenters either personally or as individuals in the public round. Specific comments by people claiming to be or to have been public employees confirm and illustrate the points I have been making regarding government and their workers. Most of these comments defend hills not attacked and vigorously assault hills undefended.

The following is to be taken as characterizations of the government employee in the aggregate. Certain individual (topical) cases may always be advanced in the counter argument. I believe the statistics where available will show them to be outliers.

We start with some compelling observations:• Governments at all levels – federal, state, local – have been running large deficits and/or accumulating unfunded liabilities the repayment of which is uncertain at best and impossible at worst.• The single largest element in the cost of government is the salaries and benefits paid to government employees – in short, government labor.• Government employees are a favored class of labor in the country. The average government employee annually earns about $66,558 compared to the $42,635 average earned by the private sector employee. Government employees’ pension, healthcare, and other benefits are unmatched in the private sector. When total benefits are considered, these numbers become $100,178 and $51,876 respectively (Cato Institute).• An alarming fraction of today’s youth seek careers in non-wealth producing sectors that are primarily in ‘public service’. Our public education system promotes, directs, and enables them to go into fields funded by charity (e.g. foundations) and taxpayers.• A ponzi scheme is characterized by making contracted payouts to early participants using monies collected from the growing cohort of the most recent participants. It collapses when monies from new participants doesn’t cover current obligations.

My columns have dealt with the facts relating to the operation of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System or Calpers. These illustrated the generous benefits afforded by the state and local governments, how the system could be gamed, how the unfunded liabilities can grow, and how the whole system works in a fog that ultimately puts the taxpayers AND the expectant government employees at risk.

15 August 2009

[This is the full length piece the first part of which was published today in the 15jul09 Union under the less dramatic title ‘Public Pensions – a breakdown’, although the latter part could be taken as a double entendre. (updated 16aug09) The full length version appears in the newspaper’s online edition. gjr]

Sophistry - a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.

The public pension ponzi is rapidly coming unglued as already pointed out in this newspaper and many others across the land. Only the most glaciated or glazed minds still believe the public sector has not been overpaid and over pensioned. The damage radius of the pension ponzi is much greater and more immediate than Madoff’s, and you are in it whether or not you pay taxes, and especially if you are a government employee.

In this short piece we’ll take a look at a typical pension formula and see how it is ‘used’. Without this basic knowledge, all you can do is react emotionally to the crisis. With it, hopefully, you will be able to direct your efforts productively. California and its pension fund manager Calpers will again be our poster child.

The basic Calpers formula that calculates a government employee’s annual pension is very simple –

The multiplier is somewhere in the two to three percent range, and is usually set by the jurisdiction (city, county) or agency (CARB, NID). Grass Valley recently raised its multiplier from 2 to 2.5%. The multiplier will also vary for categories of work and retirement age – police and fire usually have higher multipliers.

Important to note right away – any percent change in any of the three factors in the formula becomes the percent change in the annual pension.

To nail it down, let’s use some numbers. Say Sam worked 30 years for Agency37 and maxed his annual salary at $90,000 somewhere along the way (the highest salary doesn’t have to be the one you have at termination or retirement). The current multiplier for Agency37 is 2.5% for retiring at 55. Sam’s annual pension from Agency37 then calculates to

30 x $90,000 x 0.025 = $67,500.

If Sam is expected to live until, say, 83, then Calpers has to have more than $1,062,000 in Sam’s name earning interest at 4.5% per year to throw off 28 yearly pension payments of $67.5K until Sam is expected to die. Calpers will invest this amount in a portfolio with thousands of other retirement accounts, and at retirement, handles Sam’s account as an annuity. An annuity is a fixed amount invested at a given interest rate that starts being drawn down by regular payments made to its owner. At the end of a stipulated number of payments the annuity amount is drained to zero. When Sam retires, this $1,062,000 needs to be in place at Calpers. (And yes, Sam is now a millionaire.)

This ‘given interest rate’ is another big bugaboo and source of a lot of mischief. The higher you assume it is, the less you have to have at the start of Sam’s retirement, and the less Agency37 thinks it must cough up when Sam does retire. For example Agency37’s books cook much better by simply assuming that Calpers investments will appreciate at 7.5% annually instead of the more realistic 4.5% used above. Why? Because with 7.5% Agency37 needs to provide only $781,200 for Sam’s retirement.

But we all understand that this is a game. Agency37 must pay Sam $67,500 a year for life, regardless of what numbers are used to cook the books.

And if somewhere along the way Agency37 decides to ‘upgrade’ its retirement program by increasing the multiplier from, say, 2 to 2.5%, as Grass Valley recently did, then this automatically incurs a huge and instant unfunded liability for the city. The jurisdiction will be underfunded by 20% for increasing the multiplier by ‘only a measly 0.5%’. The uninformed voters, ignorant of the basic formula, will focus on this seemingly insignificant fraction, and go back to their knitting without a clue that their liability just increased 25%. And this has happened thousands of times across California in recent years.

So far this has been pretty simple stuff, but absolutely required if you want to understand and discuss the major cost of government. But this is just the start of where the fun begins on public pensions. We will now see how the future cost of the pension system becomes an unknown to all concerned, how government employees game the system, and how the accountable jurisdictions make it into a ponzi scheme as they hope that the music never stops.

To maintain some perspective on the national debates, I regularly read, view, and listen to leftwing media. Debate may be too fine of a word for the type of exchange that today goes on between conservatives and liberals. In fact, we do live on two different worlds.

This was again made clear in the recent issue of the liberal flagship Nation where Katha Pollitt (‘Healthcare We Can Believe In’) laments that Team Obama is not taking us to the promised workers’ promised land fast enough. She writes “Healthcare is a right, part of the common good, something everyone should have, and if you can't afford it in the marketplace, the government will provide it.”

This is a woman from the liberal legions who see every human need as an automatic ‘right’ without evincing a clue that she knows what is a right versus, say, a privilege (more here). In her panoply of state provided and guaranteed goodies, rights bloom from every nook and cranny. She sees no cost or convenience hindering the provision of rights to the people, all we need is proper political orientation and will. People who are too dimwitted to understand any of this are immediately marginalized beyond the social pale.

As of this writing, it is far from clear how much of the vocal opposition to reform represents wider popular feeling and how much is a mobile mob of gun nuts, birthers and teabaggers paid for and organized by lobbyists and Republican outfits like Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for Patients' Rights and FreedomWorks.

The ‘debate’ has now gotten so sharp and angular that the usually civil and measured Peggy Noonan, WSJ columnist, has just penned a piece - From 'Yes, We Can,' to 'No! Don't!’ - that finally takes to task the blizzard of Obama’s lies which in polite company were formerly known as ‘continued campaign rhetoric’. Here Noonan makes the case that Obama has slid to the “slippery” level as a politician, and is now seen as such by all who are not gathered under his messianic robe.

When Mr. Obama stays above the fray, above the nitty-gritty of specifics, when he confines his comments on health care to broad terms, he more and more seems … pretty slippery. In the town hall he seemed aware of this, and he tried to be very specific about the need for this aspect of a plan, and the history behind that proposal. And yet he seemed even more slippery. When he took refuge in the small pieces of his argument, he lost the major threads; when he addressed the major threads, he seemed almost to be conceding that the specifics don't hold. …When you seem slippery both in the abstract and the particular, you are in trouble.

There are probably some semantic strides between ‘slippery’ and ‘sleaze’. But I find myself among those having already taken those steps in their assessment of the current administration. And so we send our unheeded missives from one world to another. E Pluribus Unum, but what kind of Unum?

11 August 2009

Here are some local school ratings done within the context of California. Not sure how these can be interpreted in a national context. And here is a compilation of state public school rankings. So at 46 out of 50, California is pretty much near the bottom of the pile. Does that mean that when California ‘educators’ (love that term) rate our state’s schools, those ratings should be taken in the ‘bottom of the barrel’ context? I don’t know. Our public educators nationwide play these things fairly close to the vest, job security and all that. Would love some illumination from the more informed readers.

But given the data, what information can I make out of it? (Recall that ‘data’ is facts and beliefs about the real world, and ‘information’ is data formatted to support specific decisions. Example – white pages are data, yellow pages attempt to be information in the sense that they support your decision to choose a specific plumber. Data and information are NOT the same thing.)

So, looking at the intra-state ratings, I don’t know. It seems that our local Nevada County schools score pretty high, relatively speaking – but we have to remember where we’re located in the big pile. And these ratings are probably because we’re out of the metropolitan area crapola mills with a lot of gangs and drugs and … . But if you talk to local educators, and then talk to LA educators (our experience), you find out that our teachers are no smarter or motivated than the city teachers. And if you look at their skill sets, they can and mostly will motivate youngsters to go into fields supported by public (read political) funding. The teaching of wealth creation skills, and motivating such careers is hard to find in our politically informed and directed age.

Given this, where today would I send my kids (who are now in their forties)? If I could afford it, I would never let them set foot in a 2009 ‘normal’ public school. It would be a private school, a parochial school, or even home schooling. I wouldn’t want them graduating high school not knowing the elements of history – the unique meaning of America (note flag in the figure), the impact of WW2 on our world, the history of socialism vs capitalism, etc. I wouldn’t want them speaking in sentences like ‘Mom gave those tickets to Pat and I.’ I wouldn’t want them to unabashedly tell their friends that ‘I don’t do numbers.’

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, especially if it also sports a part of your own double helix.

(Full disclosure – I come from a poor and lower middle-class background, and am a product of only public schooling, albeit of a different age.)

09 August 2009

As reported in the 6aug09 Union (details here), the next Sacramento tea party will be on 28 August 2009 with four busses leaving Nevada City at 10AM. Bring chairs, vittles, and liquids; and, of course, the most communicative signs you can muster to get your personal message out. Important to note that bus tickets must be purchased before 5PM on 13 August 2009.

(Full Disclosure – this notice was motivated by the tons of crap coming out of Washington designed to convert America into a second rate autocracy, and paid for by the monies still left to Jo Ann and George Rebane from their life’s work, savings, and investments which now stand in danger of being taxed and inflated to oblivion. Any contributions from rightwing conspiracies, protest manufacturers, corporations large and small, and faith-based organizations will be gratefully accepted and applied fully to keeping the TypePad blog server bills for Rebane’s Ruminations paid.)

07 August 2009

And after the Postal Service, Amtrak, Social Security, the Fed, Fannie and Freddie, ... , now these turkeys want to run how much more of our economy? The stimulus beat goes on, but no one here with 12% unemployment can hear it.

When this economy finally starts to recover, in spite of all the impediments that Obama and Congress have devised for it, the Dems will take full credit for that and the rising sun, on each of which their policies will have had equal effect.

When the schools no longer teach, you can feed their ‘graduates’ any garbage you want; they have no means to tell the difference. The American townhall meeting is a piece of history still alive in a few places, but now totally distorted into national political theater. A townhall meeting was where local people met to discuss local issues and candidates, and make local decisions. In such meetings the low and the high of the community could stand up and make themselves heard equally on the matter at hand. Such meetings usually ended in a vote being taken to resolve some issue – grassroots democracy.

A townhall meeting distinguished itself from a speech or a circuit lecture by an outsider - politician, academic, entertainer - which may or not have involved a Q&A. Such gatherings were more controlled and tightly staged. No one in the past would have mistaken them for a town hall meeting.

Today our political betters are squeezing out the last drops of historical democracy from the townhall label as they spread across the nation to hold these theatrical plays where the fare served is usually pure fiction or outright lies. In spite of this, it is heartening to see some of these meetings get out of hand when the politico-in-charge doesn’t control the audience and their questions.

The people at these meetings who still have the gumption to question and disagree are then called mobs, rabble, and paid lackeys of corporate special interests. Our MSM requires no evidence to pass on as news such assessments from the producers of these townhall theaters.

As an example of the disrepute we hold our political leaders at all levels, in the latest poll/study just published, over 72 percent of Americans believe Obama lied and will raise taxes on the middle class. And this is just one lie out of an outpouring legion. Yes indeed, it’s gonna take a lot of them ‘townhall’ meetings to get the lipstick right on this heard of pigs coming out of Washington.

04 August 2009

Since we’re heading for the ‘European Model’, we should look at some of its practices. In Great Britain the government is expanding its program of putting CCTV cameras in the homes of the country’s “worst families”. These will be monitored by government agencies to make sure that they are raising their kids properly – “to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.” These and other mandated helpful government services are described here.

MIT’s Technology Review reports (here) research showing that in many technology areas no government touted and funded “transformational” breakthroughs are needed. Citing the photovoltaic solar panel industry as a prime example, the research shows that more bang (i.e. watts) for the buck can be achieved by continuing the present pace of development in the industry. This is turning out to be a little embarrassing for Steven Chu the new social engineer and Secretary of Energy. We recall that the Department of Energy has proven to be one of the most worthless government enterprises since its inception 25 years ago, eating up billions upon billions, and accomplishing no worthwhile energy objective. They’ve had a hard time going beyond “tracing (their) lineage to the Manhattan Project”, and funding transformational solar energy was finally going to be high on its new brag sheet. And then these jokers from MIT show up; who asked them?

RR readers are familiar with my alarums about adult literacy, numeracy, and the competitive abilities of the American workforce in a global economy. Some local wits have even described such concerns as those of a crowing elitist which have no basis in fact. While that has only exposed their own ignorance about the mightiest challenges facing our country, now we have a new and very large piece of corroborating evidence to add to the pile.

This evidence comes from Michigan and its auto industry layoffs, but as much could also be attributed to so many other narrowly construed, historically union protected jobs that have now disappeared. The state’s Council for Labor and Economic Growth reports that “One out of three working-age adults in Michigan — 1.7 million people — cannot read well enough to be hired for a job that will support a family. More than 40% of those potential workers, who all read below a sixth-grade level, also lack a high school diploma or GED.”

The problem, as this article points out, is that the laid off workers from many of these manufacturing jobs simply don’t have the minimal skills to get a job that can survive in our economy. And neither the funds nor the facilities are available to teach them just to read, as if reading were enough to get a new job. The only way for them to maintain their quality of life is to become a ward of the state. They all know it, and even some of us know it. But the important thing is that these unemployed will vote for candidates who will promise to maintain their QoL. And our country is overabundant in politicians who know how to make those promises and thereby pocket those constituencies.

03 August 2009

Jo Ann and I returned last night from Denver where we went Friday to celebrate the marriage of our first granddaughter. Claire and David were married in a simple yet very meaningful ceremony at their church surrounded by family and friends. The whole affair was preceded and followed by all the traditional dinners and breakfasts designed to give the two greater families plenty of time to get to know each other. Claire is blessed in having found such fine young man from a solid and gracious family. (That David is also a graduate software engineer did not knock off any points for him on my scale ;-) )

The debate on Obamacare continues and expands. The gloves and blinders are off now as to our national destination. NPR is running programs on the mostly pros of our adopting the ‘European model’, while the Europeans are trying to figure out where their model went disastrously wrong. Disastrously? Yes, they can no longer see it as a sustainable model because the system will not pencil out – where will all the wealth come from that will fund the promised government services? ‘Socialism works only until you run out of other people’s money’, Lady Margaret Thatcher.

And at last, our hopelessly hopeful in Congress and the administration have no answer save raising taxes on those who still pay them. Over the weekend their minions hit the Sunday talk show circuit, and carpet bombed America’s memory of candidate Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on households earning less than $250,000 annually. To the hoots and howls of the ignorant, many of us called it a lie then and now stand vindicated. It is a hollow victory that celebrates another MSM-buried non-event. Obamacare has finally become the visible multi-headed hydra assaulting America with rationed healthcare (see below), AND new levels of taxation that will stifle wealth creation and middle-class quality of life. More here.

A dear friend and very liberal RR reader Chris Holland responded (see comment here) to my report of how the British National Health Service (NHS) will handle the recently diagnosed diabetes of our mutual friend and loyal British subject. Her response, describing the happy land of NHS, was vintage socialist-in-waiting, and therefore deserves a more complete response since Team Obama and the American left have long been holding up the NHS as a paragon of healthcare. For those few who still do pay attention to the man behind the curtain, NHS has since its inception been more accurately described as Potemkin healthcare.